Primary Election Night

When you sit down and watch the evening news you have no idea on how much work goes into broadcasting live feeds for a less than five min hit on the network. Last night gave me much appreciation for the people in the industry.

Satellink West was hired this past Tuesday by NBC to broadcast Kelli Ward’s viewing party for the primary election. Ward’s viewing party was hosted at the Embassy Suites in Scottsdale, Arizona. Satellink West ran three fiber lines each embedded with audio and video for NBC, CNN and the POOL feed. In addition, there were two sets of COM lines with PL & IFB for NBC and CNN.

I had no idea the amount of work it takes to uplink three signals to a satellite for the networks to broadcast. My experience with uplink communications is very limited. The Crew West team showed me how to run cables for our clients and talkback communications for the talent and photojournalist. I took this opportunity to learn and soak up everything. For example, I didn’t know that the position of the Pool camera always courteously gets the middle of the press/media podium. This is because the Pool feed gets distributed to more networks. The sat tuck has a lot of components that make the uplink work. Hanging out with Mike gave me a good understanding of the terminology and general understanding of how the uplink works.

This experience was humbling and makes me appreciate all the of the work done behind the camera.